Letters to the Fifth Estate

Mutual Aid

To The Fifth Estate:

I have been delegated by the Anarchist Fund Raising Picnic held Sept. 11 at Santa Teresa Park, San Jose, California, to disburse the following funds to support the anarchist propaganda projects in the English language including Black Flag, Black Star, Freedom and Open Road.

Staff Note: The constant support from the Anarchist Fund Raising Picnics in California for our projects and the other papers is greatly appreciated. Also, their spirit of mutual aid is in the finest tradition of the anarchist movement.

More Wildcat

To the Fifth Estate:

Kelpie’s “SRAF Report” (see Letters FE #286, September, 1977) left out things like people being excluded from participation in the so-called anarcho-communist discussions, prearranged manipulation and other Leninist practices. Since confessed anarcho-communists were left out, the problem must have been different “vibes.”.

True, disassociation was available and applied at Wildcat Mt. and since. One comment there was that splitting then was better than awaiting the inevitable purges or maybe even liquidation later. (Much later as those Wildcat tabbys were totally incapable of that rumble wished by Nedwina Ludd in your August issue.)

With a growl,

Grisly Bear Chicago

Good Issue

Dear Comrades.

The September issue [FE #286] is one of the best, rich in thoughtful subjects. The review of Gary Snyder’s “The Politics of Ethnopoetics” rightfully places the pro-technology fetish of marxists, including Bookchin, where it belongs. W.B. Jeffries “Ten Theses on the Proliferation of Egocrats” is a most timely exposure of the organization mind that includes many anarchists and most applicable to the groups of the Social-Revolutionary Anarchist Federation.

(In the Social-Revolutionary Anarchist Federation Bulletin No. 58, under the heading “1977 Conference Decisions” it is reported that “In Solidarity…the SRAF conference, at Wildcat Mountain…send our comrades of the May 4th Coalition at Kent State…solidarity [against] the brutal murder of four students…” No mention is made in the decisions that would in any way express protest against the Government’s burning to death of six Symbionese Liberation Army men and women at Los Angeles, Calif., nor any sympathy toward the Four Symbionese revolutionists now languishing in jail. It needs also to be pointed out that neither the SRAF Bulletin nor its magazine The Black Star, has ever dealt editorially with the Symbionese Liberation Army and its activities—which is, in my opinion, far from courageous—for a Federation of groups that calls itself Social-Revolutionary Anarchist.)

The covering of the anti-nuclear governmental installations which has now become a world-wide anti-State movement is most effectively being covered in this, as in recent issues. The review on Sam Dolgoff’s The Cuban Revolution points out the narrow-minded position taken by an old-time defender of the CNT compromises.

“Culture Shock: Detroit” by Primitivo Solis is a gem of literature that deserves to have the real author’s name—for posterity. And last, but not least, are the more than two pages of interesting letters.

It is sad indeed to learn from the Detroit Seen that the FE is not receiving the material support that it so richly deserves—since it is, in my opinion, the most consistent anarchist expression that the English-speaking anarchist movement ever had in this country.

Donation

Classified adv. in publications such as The Nation, New Republic, The Progressive, Liberation, New York Review of Books—offering to send free sample copies—may aid in gaining a much wider circulation. Enclosed is a hundred-dollar contribution to cover the cost of such ads and other needs for the continuation of the FE.

Greetings,

Marcus Graham

Antique Anarchy

Dear Fifth Estate,

At last some of your readers and writers are beginning to see that our old $pliteracy is dead. (get on TV). Yours has been such an antique anarchy. Ignoring the real secret police, brainwash of print: the invisible left brain cop.

Print led to centralization (i.e. print/margin) while electronics will spark decentralizations. As you said of government: [Comment from the Fifth Estate, FE #285, August, 1977] As in Print…”The nature of the domination of communication by capital is the centralization of resources in the hands of a small number of active communicators (publishers and the majority who still read and write) with an immense number of passive receptors eagerly taking in whatever is given out (by press and university).” Whereas when everyone has their own TV camera, everyone can control communication.

Print communicates only with the dwindling number of (mainly white male) elitists who learned that quaint skill = the 3 Rs!

If you really believed in anarchy you’d give up the rigid “archy” of $pliteracy. We’d give up the visualinear weirdness that started this whole mess of manstitutions and their pimperialism and malienation: jock supporters of the phallus-quo—$pliterarchy—or to quote someone’s quote of someone (Letters, FE #286, September, 1977). What characterizes mass media, read print, is the fact that they (it) is anti-mediator, intransitive and in fact produces non-communication.” Print is the most social control (least communication)!

Camatte misses the elements of song and dance and myth that disappeared when poetry went written (and poets suicided). Even Gary Snyder (or especially) understands when he envisions “poesies.” Sung for all, not written for the senile, gerontocracies of spliterate nabobs. Country Songs? Electronic media frees us from the centralization of (this) print.

Love Anyway,

(Fee)Male WhoreMoans Manitoba

P.S. As you can see from the letters exchange of this (op)press: no TV violence will ever compare to the cruelty of $pliterate male bibles, wars, science, religionporn, doctors, (un)economists and their last dying ga$$ps: commercial broadcasting, erectoral politicos, abortion, sterilization and pantsuits and blue jeanetics which decrees that male literacy is in your genes. No way! It’s learned in male $ervel$.

Big R Is Back

Dear Detroiters,

Just got back in town, spending sunny days in unemployment offices with bureaucrats glaring at me from behind plastic shields. What am I going to steal? Pencils. Papers. What a weird career. Imagine someone spending four years in college so they can be privileged enough to get locked up in a plastic cage watching the people come and go.

The American dream come true. Gee, Dad, was it really worth depriving yourself of all your hard-earned money, so your kid could go to college. Think how proud you’ll be telling everyone your kid works with plastic.

Well, here I sit. Same unemployment office, same plastic, same people staring at me as they shuffle papers…”have you got a job?… are you looking for a job?”

Nothing to do in this renovated warehouse, so I thought I’d read the FE.

I’ve been back two weeks after being two months away. Why did I return? Did I ever leave!

Detroit has the ability to erase all thought other than that of Detroit.

Driving down the Lodge Freeway. How many times have I driven down that fucking road. Dead dog in the third lane, being beaten into the pavement. Could it be the same dog I saw in ’72 … ’69? Same dog, same road, same me … click—CKLW—same fucking music!

Well, I’m back here now and having a hard time trying to keep hold of those two months away.

Back in the unemployment office trying to hustle my way out of work. I don’t want to work, so it’s one year on—one year off. That’s Detroit.

NO, MISTER, DON’T GIVE ME A FUCKING JOB!

Give me $97.00 a week. No ties. No work. And I don’t want to wait thirteen weeks.

Same ol’ thing. Same ol’ Detroit.

Big R Detroit

China Book

Dear FE Folks,

In 1976 the ’70s Front, a group of libertarians in Hong Kong, compiled and published The Revolution is Dead, Long Live the Revolution, Readings on the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution from an Ultra-Left Perspective. Members of the group have since been involved in the publication of the journal Minus 7. The book represents a panorama of the group’s development from critical Maoists to independent libertarians.

The Revolution is Dead…was not a commercial venture, it was printed, as Minus 7 has been, to communicate with others about the Chinese situation. But the printing debt incurred in the book’s production has contributed to the financial difficulties involved in publishing Minus 7.

Because we feel that there has been much valuable material published in Minus 7 and would like to see it continue, we are undertaking to help the 70s folks distribute the book and raise the money they need to go forward.

All those who are interested in reading the book and in helping the group can send us $4 (cost of printing) plus any donation possible. We will forward all money received to the people in Hong Kong.